This research monograph represents an outcome of the cross-fertilization between nonlinear functional analysis and mathematical modelling, and demonstrates its application to solid and contact mechanics. Based on authors’ original results, it introduces a general fixed point principle and its application to various nonlinear problems in analysis and mechanics. The classes of history-dependent operators and almost history-dependent operators are exposed in a large generality. A systematic and unified presentation contains a carefully-selected collection of new results on variational-hemivariational inequalities with or without unilateral constraints. A wide spectrum of static, quasistatic, dynamic contact problems for elastic, viscoelastic and viscoplastic materials illustrates the applicability of these theoretical results.

Written for mathematicians, applied mathematicians, engineers and scientists, it is also a valuable tool for graduate students and researchers in nonlinear analysis, mathematical modelling, mechanics of solids, and contact mechanics.